EBay and KnownOrigin announced in a joint statement today that the e-commerce giant has acquired the NFT marketplace for an undisclosed sum.
CEO Jamie Iannone said last year that his company was exploring crypto payments and looking at NFTs, which became available on eBay in May 2021.
The move comes among a number of NFT marketplace acquisitions. Just yesterday, Uniswap Labs, the company behind decentralized exchange Uniswap, said it was acquiring NFT aggregation platform Genie. And in April, OpenSea, the largest NFT marketplace, acquired NFT aggregator Gem.
Why Christine Brown Left Robinhood for an NFT App
Robinhood has had a volatile journey in the crypto business. The quick-swipe stock trading app launched in 2013, but didn't add crypto for five years. It started with Bitcoin and Ethereum trading in February 2018, then in July added Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Dogecoin—and got major blowback for the latter. (Throughout the crypto surge of 2021, DOGE was a drug for Robinhood until it became an albatross.) Since then it has added Bitcoin SV, Ethereum Classic, Compound, Polygon, Solana, and Shiba...
An NFT (non-fungible token) is a unique token linked to digital or physical content, providing proof of ownership. They have exploded in the art and music world.
KnownOrigin is a UK-based platform that allows for the buying and selling of NFT artwork. It runs on the Ethereum blockchain and allows artists to mint NFTs too.
Why Bill Murray Is Making Ethereum NFTs About His Life
Bill Murray has a lot of stories—and there are a lot of stories out there about Bill Murray. Some are from the actor’s nearly five-decade entertainment career, from “Saturday Night Live” to films like “Ghostbusters” and “Caddyshack,” and his relationships with fellow comedic legends. Others are tales about the 71-year-old and his propensity to, for example, crash random weddings or steal people’s French fries. Come July 15, some of those stories and others will be available for purchase as NFTs...
“KnownOrigin has built up an impressive, passionate and loyal group of artists and collectors making them a perfect addition to our community of sellers and buyers,” Iannone said in the statement.
KnownOrigin co-founder David Moore added that the eBay partnership would help “attract a new wave of NFT creators and collectors.”
Founded in 2018, KnownOrigin is one of the first NFT marketplaces, and has generated $7.8 million in sales since its launch, according to DappRadar data. NFT sales took a hit in 2022 as market conditioned worsened, but Q1 trading still topped $12 billion.
